Hard to Watch
by Shiba Ayame
Summary: Some things are hard to watch, but you just can't look away... like your best friend in a one-sided love. Shonen-ai, idiocy and flashbacks left and right. Don't like, don't read. RenoxRufus Oneshot.


I had to write this

I had to write this. It sounded like fun, and I've seen it happen a thousand times. . As sad as that may be, it's true. And it's not in a romantic way, like some people might see it, but it's trying to keep your best friend from breaking their own heart.

Note: Lime, shonen-ai, drunkeness, a raunchy Elena, a sappy friendship speech reminiscent of Anzu from Yu-Gi-Oh, overprotective best friends and emo flashbacks. Post- AC, but about a few months. Oh, the flashbacks! . I haven't written so many in one fic before, let alone in a oneshot. XD Most of the story is told through flashbacks. Only now and then do you get Rude's commentary paragraph.

Disclaimer: If I owned FFVII, I wouldn't have to be saving up and counting on my birthday money to buy my Sephiroth costume for next year's conventions… :cries:

Oneshot

Hard to Watch

--

Something are hard to watch, but it's impossible to look away. Things like train wrecks and car crashes, things like explosions, or massacres, or epidemics, or horrible injuries, and the like.

Things like your best friend in love.

It all started four years ago, at the HQ Christmas Party…

(Flashback)

_The smells of cinnamon pine and alcohol permeated the Turks' conference room. I, sitting in a corner, could almost taste the mint chocolates on a tray atop the table about a yard to my right. Elena, having rolled in an upright piano (I'd never known that she was a talented musician, regardless of instrument) with Tseng singing in a decent tenor tone, though staggeringly drunk. I wasn't much for drinking myself under the table, but of course Reno, sitting next to me, had already put a serious hurting on our supply of spiked egg nog._

_Eventually, Elena gave up stumbling over keys (after her fourth bloody mary and six shooters, mind you) and turned on the radio to the station playing absurdly repetitive Christmas music. She staggered over to me, nearly toppling herself over, and flirted with me so long that I'd began to forget about my redheaded partner in the uncomfortable folding chair next to me. Hell, I was so absorbed in dodging the blonde girl's constant attempts to squeeze her way into my suit pants that I didn't even notice my best friend mumble something about "Bathroom" and go crawling off._

_Nearly fifteen minutes passed from the moment I'd noticed he was gone. Friends hold friends' hair when they offer to the porcelain god, I'd remembered, and excused myself to go check on Reno, hoping he hadn't drowned in his own puke or was too weak to hold himself over the toilet. I dismissed another raunchy offer from Elena on the way out the door, turning in the general direction of the bathroom._

_Luckily for me, I didn't need to walk very far. My inhebriated best friend turned out to be not-so-silently hiding in a supply closet, door halfway closed, arms around a figure that was pinning him to a wall. Bottle of whiskey in his hand, he was engaged in a firey lip-lock with our boss, none other than Rufus Shinra._

(End Flashback)

Back then, I thought I understood. They were drunk, for the Ancients' sake, the secretary and night guard that shared that "hiding place" had hung mistletoe, and everybody is generous on Christmas Eve… I was under the impression that it was purely a circumstantial occurrence, a one-time thing.

(Flashback)

_"Yo, Rude." It was against my policy to respond with the same phrase Reno greeted me with (him, having grown up on the streets and coming into the Turks barely out of his teens), so I merely nodded. He sat on the bed opposite the doorway to the room, mine being on the right-hand wall, empty. I could faintly identify the stench of alcohol on his breath, and the warm brown scotch on his nightstand, a rocks glass half-empty seemingly his only consort besides myself._

_"I… I think I like the Boss."_

_I chuckled. "Everybody in the Turks likes the Boss- how else would we be able to take orders from him so obediently, he's like a big brother-"_

_"No," my partner whispered. "I like the Boss… as in, like, sex." At this point I couldn't tell if it was the booze or the revelation making him flush. "Ever since the Christmas party last week, I really think I like him, yanno? Like, he's a really good kisser-"_

_"You were drunk-"_

_"And he was pinning me to the wall, and I didn't mind-"_

_I watched him falter as he stood, warning him, "Reno, you're jumping to conclusions, we shouldn't have got you that bottle of scotch-"_

_"And every time he calls me in for orders I can't look him in the eye-"_

_"Reno, you're not thinking staright-" I snatched the bottle out of his grasp._

_"And every time I see him, I just want to- just want to… hold him, you know?" By now my best friend was crying, no longer upset about the disapperarance of his booze, clinging to my shoulder as if it were the only thing keeping him from falling off the face of the earth. The smell of harsh liquor wafter up to my nose as he sobbed, mumbling incoherently._

_I held him, like he was the little brother I never had, for the rest of the night. When we woke up I had to get myself another suit, mine being dissheveled, Reno looking like his usual unkempt self. His eyes were blooshot, as if he hadn't even slept. I asked if he was alright, he said he was fine, and both of us reported in that morning._

(End Flashback)

New Year's Eve, he didn't even show up at the party, not even to get drunk (something unheard of for us Turks), and Elena was worried sick, constantly asking me if Reno was in a good state of health. Well, that's what you get for being the only female in the group- default mother figure, I suppose.

(Flashback)

_"Where's Reno?"_

_"For the eleventh time, Elena, he's fine. He's got a serious cold, and the medication's making him drowsy, so he's sleeping it off. He said he might stop by later, or call the conference phone so he can wish us a happy new year." Something made me feel the slightest bit guilty about lying, but I'd promised Reno I wouldn't tell anyone._

_"He's not really sick, is he?" an authoritative voice called from behind me, inquiring, but more like a statement. Rufus already knew that Reno didn't have a cold. "And don't try to tell me that it's a hangover either, because he gets over those quickly."_

_I nodded. "Personal issues, boss." Rufus, in the stead of reply, shot me a "Care to elaborate?" look. "I'm not going to say anothing else," I told him._

_The boss simply smirked, whirling away and whispered something to Tseng about bringing Reno some other medication. "It's the kind I use, gets you back on your feet much quicker. Besides, 'tis the season to give back."_

_I nodded. No point in actually stopping him now. Besides, it's what Reno would want, right?_

_The ball fell, and Elena and the rest of them chanted the countdown. I usually didn't do stupid parts of celebrations with everyone else unless I was drunk off my own ass. The clocks signaled midnight, and I just looked out the cieling-to-floor window overlooking the upper plate._

_"Happy New Year, Reno."_

(End Flashback)

I couldn't sit him down and tell him the truth. I couldn't even lie to my best friend and say "Don't worry, he'll eventually open up to you!" or something along thsoe lines. But it would kill me if I told him that he was just setting himself up to get knoecked back down again.

Every night he came back, broken and disshevelled, reduced to tears.

Only once did I see him laugh.

(Flashback)

_From our vantage point, it wasn't hard to see that the meteor had done more damage than anyone of us had ever seen. Midgar, our home, now reduced to piles of crumbled concrete, shards of glass and busted steel supports. It made the slums on the lower levels look like a slice of heaven._

_And then Reno laughed. Not a nervous laugh like he would've done, or a hysterical "I can't believe that I just lost my house" laugh, but a genuine, heartfelt laugh. His shoulders shook, and I asked him if he was alright._

_"Yeah, I'm good," he answered, not even phased by the fact that I'd thought he'd gone insane. "It just means that we'll all have a chance to start over. A phoenix rises from the ashes, right?" He smiled, overlooking the clouds of dust still floating around our demolished city. "We'll just start again."_

_The boss looked to Tseng, then the rest of us. "I suppose that there's no Shin Ra left to work for, right?" We nodded; the remnants of the structurally unstable HQ building could be clearly seen from here. "So I guess this means goodbye. A fresh start, like Reno said."_

_"But," Elena said, "Isn't it in the Turks contract to live, work and breathe for Shin Ra?" I'd never seen her as the type to go on some strange, inspirational friendship speech. Then again, over the past few years, she'd suprised me many times. "If we pledged to protect Shin Ra come hell or high water, we still have a purpose. It's not goodbye yet- there's still a Shinra here." She pointed to the boss._

_Rufus turned, a puzzling look on his face. "I suppose that would work.. but for now, you wouldn't have a pension plan or anything... The company as-is will have to fall back and regroup. Of course we'll still control the energy market, but there's other sources of energy out there..." He must've seen the collective look of relief on everyone's faces. "I've grown up into this company, as you guys know. Tseng was my father in absentia." He paused. "It would be cruel to split up the family as we know it."_

_Elena, who I'd finally figured out as marginally insane from the loss of the world she knew, was nearly moved to tears. Even Reno, I could tell, was smiling. I knew that this was the nicest thing that he had ever said to any one of us- and was virtually an ineffectual "Let's keep going what we have, okay?"_

_"For Shin Ra," I suggested._

_"For Shin Ra." they all concluded, Reno staring Rufus straight in the eye for the first time in two full years. We raised our emergency booze flasks in a toast._

(End Flashback)

Over the next few months Rufus led a campaign to rebuild Shin Ra as a more "eco-friendly" power company- regrouping employees, researching biofuels and hydroelectricity, even setting up windmills in the Nibelheim area to make power that way. Our makeshift office was a fallback in Kalm, while construction efforts were underway to rebuild a single-level city over and around the wreckage of Midgar. I remember the bright look on Reno's face when we attended the consecration of the new city- Edge, they called it.

All wasn't going well. Though we had reconciled (kind of) with the members of AVALANCHE, there were still occasional protests on how the company was just trying to capture the bleeding hearts of the people to install more planet-corruptive power plants. No matter how many press conferences we held, not matter how many times we'd let the media raid through all of our research files, it was just flat out annoying. Just like everyone else, we were trying to make something out of our clean slate.

Reno's mood had even picked up. He smiled more often, could actually hold a conversation with the Boss in a mission briefing, and didn't dive into the booze every night. Every once in a while he'd open the door to our room at quarter to three, his hair a mess and his clothes muffed up with a smell on him that didn't belong to him. Every time he did, he'd grab his best friend Jack from the shelf and poured himself a glass.

(Flashback)

_"Reno, why drink so much?" I asked, knowing full well that he usually only needed one dosage of alcohol for his midnight snack._

_"One shot for every time I said it," he'd responded, "and one shot for every time he didn't respond."_

_Though he'd usually cry himself to sleep, once he actually stayed up long enough to tell me something after getting close to alcohol poisoning for the umpteenth time._

_"You know," he whispered, unbuttoning his untucked shirt, tossing it halfway across the room where the laundry pile lay, "Tonight he was... gentle."_

(End Flashback)

It was hard to tell what kind of a mood Reno was in- depressed or overzealous about life- when the Boss came down with those marks on his skin. The top-notch doctors in Mideel had called it 'geostigma', but I didn't see what it had to do with the planet. Reno was at the Boss' beck and call almost 24/7, knowing that Rufus could barely move as much as he wanted to.The kid even took up temporary residence in the Boss's room, so that he could just stay there the entire time. Sure, he still went out when he was told to, but he'd much rather be there, changing bandages. He and Tseng even began to sleep in shifts.

The helicpoter mission over the Crater was the first time I'd seen Reno in nearly two weeks. The Boss's condition was steadily declining, and if those doctors didn't find a cure soon, we were sure that the Shinra line would end. We didn't want to split up - we'd come close to it before and the prospect was frightening.

When the three Sephiroth clones - his "brothers" - ran amuck, Reno and I ended up spending a lot of time together for the first time in a while. When he wasn't near the Boss, he was either happy as a clam or more depressed than emo-boy Cloud. I put up with mis PMS-like mood swings as best as I could, but it just wasn't the same until Could had pulled that last victory out of his ass.

When Rufus' geostigma was cured, Reno was the happiest I've ever seen him. Knowing that he could've died but redefined the story of the Comeback Kid couldn't have made him happier. I'm pretty sure that I hadn't seen him cry with gratitude since he'd finished his training.

"Boss, I need to talk to you," I announced, in the office of the new Shin Ra Electric Power Company headquarters building. Rufus gave Tseng behind him a nod, and the older man left the room.

"Out with it, Rude."

I took a deep breath. "I've known about you and Reno for a long time, sir," I started, "and I'm sorry to say that I've seen him every time he's come back to the room in the middle of the night. He's been happier since Sephiroth died, but he's not the crazy, sarcastic punk he used to be."

Rufus closed his eyes, nodding. "Yes, I'm aware of that. And since it's just us, screw the formalities. I know there's something you'd rather be saying," he told me, so I took another deep breath and exhaled.

"The was you've been treating him the last four years makes me want to honestly shove something deep in your skull. He's confused, he's lost and you broke his heart, you bastard." God damn, I never thought I'd say that straight out to my boss. If he didn't tell me to speak my mind as it was, I would've had my pay docked for months.

Rufus paused, standing up and striding to a window overlooking Edge on its western side, the sunset forcing purple and pink streaks into the clouds above. "You know," he mumbled, "Reno isn't the type to give up. No matter how many times I pushed him away, he just came back for more." He folded his hands behind his back. "I couldn't tell if he was a glutton for punishment or just a lovesick idiot. But after a while... he grows on you."

I remained silent - Rufus was on a roll here, and I didn't want to interrupt his soliloquy. "I realized that we needed to change who we were after the Meteor incident. Not just the face of the company, but all of us. My bout with geostigma only reinfirced that fact."

"When all of the people affected with geostigma were cured, Reno cried," I told him, "Not because you were almost dead, but because you were still here. He was so happy."

The blonde man at the window gave a faint smile. "Did he now?" he muttered, then coughed. "Rude, you've been in the Turks for how many years now?"

"Almost twenty," I said. Two decades and still going.

"And how many women have I slept with?"

"Far too many to count," I said.

"How many of them came back?"

I thought about it for a moment. "None, sir."

"Do you want to know why they never came back?" he asked. "It's because every one of them said those three little words when all the fun was over and done. I didn't say anything back, and so they usually left in tears." He smiled. "But Reno came back. He kept saying it. And after a while I started a drinking game with myself, with the bottle of whiskey I keep under the bed." He turned to the window again. "One shot for every time he's said 'I love you.' And then another shot every time I didn't say it back because I was a coward."

"Sir?" I questioned. I currently had no idea where Rufus was headed. He was usually rather straightforward.

"Have you ever fallen in love, Rude?"

Now that was unexpected. I'd never imagined the Boss and 'love' in a sentence since before this entire debacle, let alone in the same paragraph. "No, sir. But I know what it looks like."

Rufus strode back to his desk. "How do you know?"

I scratched my head. "I've been told that it's when you can't get that person out of your head, when you'd do anything for them, and always hesitate to hurt them in any way."

He sluched back down into his desk chair. "Well then, if that's the way it is," he concluded, "Guilty as charged."

The look on the Boss's face was priceless when the office doors opened, and Reno strutted in, almost unable to contain his smirk. "So that's how it is?"

Rufus stifled a laugh. "Reno, I don't know what you're talking about."

I smiled. "Sir," I pulled my cell phone from my pocket, placing it o the desk for the Boss to see. 'Reno, call time 8:53' was clearly visible on the screen. "I'll leave you two alone to duke this out." I said, putting my sunglasses back on and leaving the office.

"'Guilty as charged', huh?" I heard Reno's cocky voice say, with a pause for what I presumed was a nod from the boss. "Then I guess I caught you red-handed."

I smiled, leaning the door shut with a soft click. One of the things I'd learned from living with Reno for eight years: In a horror movie, it might be hard to watch, but the new couple always leaves alive.

--

Did you like? Honestly it was my first attempt at RenoXRufus. I think it turned out good, although it did get kinda wordy and repetitive at some points. Overall though, I'm happy that it turned out as well as it did.

I know Rufus got just a little bit soft at the end, but it's not a conference from boss to employee, it's a man-to-man chat there. I think he'd open up just a little to Rude - being Reno's best friend, he's bound to know everything and anything about Reno there is to know.

Happy 30th Uploaded Fanfic, everyone! Huzzah for hitting a landmark. I know a lot of writers have me trumped in that respect - Kylara Kistune, for example, who's written over eighty (if not a hundred, I'll have to check) fanfics for Harry Potter and Kingdom Hearts combined. Singlehandedly, she's my favorite authoress. This fic is for her (even though I don't know if she's very familiar with the FFVII universe at all... .)

See that pretty little pale purple button? You know you wanna click it... Wait, you haven't clicked it yet? Damn! My mind control worked yesterday... .


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